Overview

The book focuses on the phenomenon of predation during the closing decades of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century in Indias western littoral. It attempts a material history of piracy, locating its antecedents, its social context, and its ramifications at a crucial time of political transition. Alongside, it revisits the idea of piracy as a category that was largely constituted by regimes of power and regulation in the high seas and in littoral waters. In the case of India and the Indian Ocean, the pirate was a particularly maligned figure thanks to the discourse put forward by the English East Company. The book unravels the making of such a discourse, while remaining attentive to fissures and tensions within the discourse.

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9780199467044

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Reviews

Subramanian's study breaks new ground in piracy and Indian Ocean studies ... her thoughtful discussion of the issues that can sur-round the use of colonial archives to reconstruct complex and often problematic phenomena should become required reading for anyone setting out to reconstruct the history of the colonial experience in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and Pacific worlds. * Richard B. Allen, The International Journal of Maritime History * an insightful and valuable contribution to the field of pirate studies ... [Subramanian] widens the possibilities of the field and lights the way for future studies of piracy. * Timothy Riding, History *

an insightful and valuable contribution to the field of pirate studies ... [Subramanian] widens the possibilities of the field and lights the way for future studies of piracy. * Timothy Riding, History *

an insightful and valuable contribution to the field of pirate studies ... [Subramanian] widens the possibilities of the field and lights the way for future studies of piracy. * Timothy Riding, History * Subramanian's study breaks new ground in piracy and Indian Ocean studies ... her thoughtful discussion of the issues that can sur-round the use of colonial archives to reconstruct complex and often problematic phenomena should become required reading for anyone setting out to reconstruct the history of the colonial experience in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and Pacific worlds. * Richard B. Allen, The International Journal of Maritime History *

Author Information

Lakshmi Subramanian is Professor of History at Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.

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